Bouncing Ball Animation

Create a new document with dimensions Width: 2500, Height: 150, Background transparent. You are free to use any other color or keep it transparent.

Open the Tool bar in case it is not open from Windows -> Tools. First I create the ball using the Ellipse tool .

At the top left corner draw a ball drag while keeping the Shift key pressed this gives you a proper circle. Go to Window > Fill or press Shift + F7 to open the Fill palette. Select a Radial fill from the drop down as shown below:

Click on the edit button highlighted in blue below to change colours if you want to put any other colours rather than black & white. Clicking once on the tabs highlighted in purple will open the colours dialog box where you can select different colors for your gradient. Adjust the Radial gradient to make it look like you want.

Now after creating the ball you need to convert it into an symbol. Select the object (Ball) you just created, Right click on the object using the Pointer tool and the select 'Convert to Symbol' or simply press F8 on the Keyboard. Name it ball and select graphic as the type.

After creating a symbol it will look something like one shown here when selected .

Now 'Copy' the symbol & 'paste' it, by default the pasted object will overlap the original object, Use the pointer tool to place the object to the bottom center but a little towards the left of the canvas to give a realistic effect.

Now comes the Animation part, make sure both the objects selected, then go to Modify > Symbol > Tween Instances, You will get a pop-up asking how many frames as shown below (fig 1.5). Say 5 frames and keep 'Distribute to Frames' checked, say OK.

Now go to Window > Frames, you will see a total of 7 frames in the Frames palette 1 for the beginning, one for the end and five for the in-between tweening as we had said five frames. You can now view the animation you just created by clicking on the Play button at the bottom of the document window.

That's not the end of the animation because after the ball hits the floor it has to bounce back up and in the same direction. Now select the last frame in the animation and click on the small triangle on the Frames palette as shown below then select duplicate frame.

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Click on 'At the End', so you will get frame number 8 select.

Select the ball with the pointer tool in frame 8, then go to Modify > Transform >Distort & distort the ball as if it looks a bit pressed as it touches the ground as shown in the image here .

Now go back to the first frame, select the ball on the canvas, then copy the ball from there and paste it on Frame number at the Top-Right corner of the canvas.

Now comes the Animation part again. Select both the objects, then go to Modify > Symbol > Tween Instances, You will get a pop-up asking how many frames Say 5 frames and keep 'Distribute to Frames' checked, say OK. Now you will have total of 14 frames, click on the Play button to view your animation. Distort the ball again.

Continue these steps until you have the desired result you want to achieve. I repeated these steps with the ball returning to its starting point as shown below:

Now the final part i.e. rendering your animation or exporting it. Go to the File menu select Export Preview, You will get a export preview window. In the Format selection choose Animated GIF.

If you want to control the speed of the animation go to the Animation tab select all the frames from top to bottom by pressing Shift and simultaneously clicking on the top and the bottom frames and putting a number in the input box with a small clock above it shown below. Seven is the default and to slow down your animation put a larger number in the box outlined in blue. To have your animation loop a specific amount of time, select your options from the animation drop down highlighted in red below:

 

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